Los Angeles history

Grill 'em All

I took a break from blogging the other evening, and on the spur of the moment thought I would check in with the food truck craze that has swept Los Angeles.

I’ll warn you now that my opinions on local food are unconventional (ask me my thoughts on Jonathan Gold sometime). I’m no snob, but whenever I pass the Original Pantry and see a long line I wonder, “Are those people crazy?” And I think In-N-Out Burger is probably the most overrated place in town.

Part of the appeal of this rolling cuisine is the hunt for the truck, using clues from Twitter and the Web, and my luck has not been terribly good. I once wasted my entire dinner hour waiting in Little Tokyo (in the rain) for the Nom Nom Truck on the recommendation of my newsroom neighbors Alana Semuels and Roger Vincent and ever since I have been calling it the “No Show Truck.”

People who don’t live in Los Angeles or who haven’t had the food truck experience might wonder why anybody is making a fuss. But these are not the familiar white vans that roll up to a construction site -- their horns blasting “La Cucaracha” -- with a menu of chips, soda and shrink-wrapped sandwiches that taste like sawdust.

Like everything else that is a sensation in Los Angeles, this is an extreme interpretation of the subject.

To be honest, after the No Show Truck non-encounter, I pretty much gave up on idea. I often pass half a dozen roach coaches on the way home from work, parked along Figueroa in Highland Park or Mission Road in Lincoln Heights – but those are two neighborhoods where I won’t be stopping late at night unless my car throws a rod.

Then several months ago, I heard about Grill 'em All from one of the baristas at the local Starbucks. It had the magic ingredients: Award-winning food that is mysteriously elusive, darting from neighborhood to neighborhood. Several weeks later, I tracked Grill 'em All to a food truck festival in Rosemead, but the line was ridiculously long. No burger is worth that kind of wait, I decided.

In the meantime, I sampled Asian food from a truck that often parks a few blocks from the Daily Mirror HQ. Neither the food, nor the name of the truck, was memorable and left me questioning once again whether there’s any there there.

Then on Tuesday, for no reason at all, I checked Grill 'em All’s website and discovered it was going to be “near York and Figueroa” in Highland Park. So I drove over, and after exploring the area (“near” covers a lot of ground) I was about to give up when I saw a popup food truck convention a block off York hidden next to strip mall.

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times

This time, there was a long line for the Lobsta Truckand almost no waiting for Grill 'em All.

It’s obvious from the Heavy Metal van and the menu that Grill 'em All is dining taken to the extreme. There’s the Molly Hatchet (seared fennel sausage gravy, bacon, maple), the Blue Cheer (bleu cheese, cranberry gastrique, Munchos) and the Waste 'em All (green chilies, pepper jack, beer soaked onion).

Figuring that this would be my one and only time with Grill 'em All, I ordered the Behemoth, which is a burger between two grilled-cheese sandwiches, with bacon and other unhealthful stuff throw in. I had been urged to try the h-100s (hand-rolled tator tots with cheese) but they didn’t have any, so I got the fries with garlic dip.

I dragged the Behemoth home, took a picture and ate it. Yes, the whole thing, though I didn’t finish the fries.

And how was the Behemoth? Was it fabulous? Not really. I don’t pretend to be a gourmand or a food expert, but I’d rate it only OK. I have certainly had better burgers and I have had worse. But I’m not sure that the food truck craze is as much about dining as it is about the ephemeral experience of tracking down a truck and getting something exotic. I’m glad I did it once to find out what it’s all about, but honestly, I would never do it again. It's kind of like having a deep-fried Twinkie at the County Fair.